Highly Sensitive People at Speed

Some animals are more sensitive than others.

In any higher animal population, 15-20% are very sensitive to stimulation. Evolutionarily, it benefited the group to have a subset more alert to danger, comparatively better at sourcing new foodstuff or understanding deeply the habits of other animals.

For humans, same.

15-20% of humans have sensory processing sensitivity - an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system and a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli.

For me, same.

Summarised by Tom Falkenstein:

"Highly sensitive people (HSPs) observe things in great detail exhaustively, think longer and more deeply before they take action, and generally react more emotionally to positive as well as negative occurrences in their surroundings."

Clearly then pluses and minuses.

So how do fast-paced environments impact those whose natural tendency is to 'pause to check' in novel situations? How does this greater sensitivity to subtle stimuli fare in an environment with intense, and varied stimuli, arriving quickly?

Not obviously fantastically.

But there are ways and means of coping - and indeed advantages to be had if the worst impacts of this natural mismatch can be contained.

Pace brings tiredness and tiredness brings tension. Both bring pressure and physiological symptoms like breathing more shallowly. Together, these manifest as fast feedback loops of overwhelm.

This and other reasons means that the highly sensitive person needs to become extremely competent at calming themselves down when they notice that they feel overstimulated, tense, or emotional.

In fast-paced environments, calming rituals need to become a core part of any daily routine. It is not a nice-to-have. It is not salve to be applied in acutely stressful situations. It must become a hyper-frequent preventative measure; an uncompromising, committed ritual.

Beyond this, prioritising rest, sleep, and recovery above all is essential. Rest is a HSPs responsibility and should be treated with the same deliberateness and importance as elite athletes treat their recovery.

Inevitably, this will mean saying no to other things. HSPs working in fast-paced environments do so at the neglect of other areas of their lives. That is the calculation that you must do before joining.

If fast-pace environments are the equivalent of 5 years in slower organisations, consider then that the raw stimulation to HSPs will be multiples of this. That is an opportunity of extreme learning. But should be undertaken with care.

Take seriously your attempt to drink from the firehouse of experience.